This article profiles a media literacy course at the University of Washington to discuss the contours and relevance of media literacy. The piece also reviews new research on the relevance of media literacy.

Interview with Renee Hobbs, a professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island's Harrington School of Communications and Media. Hobbs is also the director of the Harrington School's Media Education Lab, a research hub and educator resource for teaching media literacy.

With a recent focus on "fake news" and the realization that many of us (adults and kids alike) get our news primarily through social media, the concept of "media literacy" is buzzing. And the #medialiteracy community is responding to this buzz with gusto.

Below are a few framing ideas, planning tools, and media-literacy-infused project examples that can help you leverage this momentum, expand media-literacy education in your classrooms, and coordinate a media-literacy program schoolwide.

The news is constantly awash with stories reporting on – and arguably amplifying – public anxieties over youth and media. The anxieties concern violence and video games, gaming addiction, internet and mental health, and teen suicide.

This blog post argues that "information pollution" is a potential global disaster that extends beyond "fake news." The author argues that understanding the complexity of the problem is critical to designing a solution, and he discusses media literacy within a range of solutions.

1) Design can make it difficult to discern fact from fiction
2) Data and visual journalism may oversimplify matters
3) Political perspectives shape our trust in media
4) Local journalists are the frontline for combating this
5) Cultural implications are also important

An appropriate answer by journalists and civil society in the aim to combat violent disinformation and radical messages means more than only reaction or correction: It means to activate our communication, innovate our way of story telling, to know the echochambers and the stories which are told there – and to know which our own narratives and stories are to counter the rumors, hate messages and violent images of radical sources.

Unfortunately, the concept of ‘humanitarian news’, whilst commonly used, is seldom defined. In an attempt to provide some clarity, we offer three distinct definitions of humanitarian news: (1) news about humanitarian crises and actors, (2) news adopting a humanitarian ethic and (3) news as humanitarian practice. These categories concern the nature, ethics and purpose of journalism respectively – or the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ of news.

Here’s a list of initiatives that hope to fix trust in journalism and tackle “fake news”. There’s a lot. I’ve tried to collect an extensive list of projects, initiatives and tools created to fix trust in journalism and false/fake news and misinformation. This also includes efforts and initiatives around verification.

What is fake news? Is it it something that is fiction being presented as fact? An opinion posted as a news story? Or is it simply any news story that you don’t like? It seems that the last one is really what many mean, especially when an article or outlet is being shouted down on twitter or called out on Facebook.

A popular meme of the last few years is the social media “filter bubble” — the idea that services like Facebook and Twitter serve to reinforce users’ biases by feeding them content with which they are already inclined to agree.

Recent political and security-related developments have increased the focus on, and concern over, the use of biased and deceptive information as a tool to exert strategic influence. The growing emphasis on countering the manipulation of information calls for an equally attentive approach to the usage and definition of the terms involved.